Evaluation of Patients’ Adherence to Human Immunodeficiency Virus at the Ouagadougou University Teaching Hospital: A Prospective, Cross-sectional, Descriptive and Analytical Study

Objective: To study adherence to Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) screening among parturients and recent mothers with unknown HIV serostatus in the maternity ward of the University Teaching Hospital Bogodogo in Ouagdougou.

Patients and Methods: Our study was prospective, cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical, and was conducted over a 4-month period from 1 May to 31 August 2022. Frequencies were given with a 95% confidence interval. Univariate and multivariate logistic regressions were used to analyse the factors influencing adherence to screening. A difference was statistically significant if p<0.05. The odd ratio was also used if p< 0.05.

Results: In our study, parturients and recent mothers who did not know their serostatus represented 3.33% of women during the study period. The average age of the women was 26.5 years; housewives (58.8%), those with less than secondary education (70%) and married women (77%) were the most representative. The women had at least one prenatal consultation, and the majority (78.8%) had not been offered HIV testing during their pregnancy, which explains why they did not know their HIV status. More than half of the women (54.50%) had poor knowledge in Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV PMCT/HIV. The uptake rate was 85.6%. The factors influencing uptake were being post-partum and not having been offered screening. Neither socio-demographic characteristics nor level of knowledge had any influence on uptake. Fear was the main reason for refusing screening. HIV seroprevalence was 2.59%.

Conclusion: In our area, a lot of parturients did not know their HIV status. As HIV screening during pregnancy is fundamental to prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT/HIV), an assessment of health workers' knowledge of PMTCT/HIV would be necessary in order to improve the quality of care provided to women.